Today is August 13, Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time.
We read at today’s Mass, “Since then no prophet has arisen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face. He had no equal in all the signs and wonders the LORD sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh and all his servants and against all his land, and for the might and the terrifying power that Moses exhibited in the sight of all Israel” (Dt 34:10-11).
As we continue this month’s meditation on thirst, today’s reading turns our hearts to Moses, the one Scripture calls a friend of God — the man who spoke with the Lord face-to-face.
This closeness, this intimacy, is at the heart of every soul’s longing. It’s what we’re truly thirsting for: not simply blessings from God, but God himself.
Deuteronomy tells us, “No prophet has arisen like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.” That phrase echoes with such tenderness and power. Though Moses did not see the full glory of God — Scripture tells us he saw only the Lord’s back — it is clear that the relationship he shared with God was personal, direct and real.
Seeing the Lord’s glory
And here’s the incredible thing: God wanted it that way.
Moses thirsted for God. As the Psalmist puts it, “My heart speaks to you, ‘Seek His face.’ Your face, O Lord, I will seek” (Ps 27:8).
We’ve all prayed something like this: “Lord, do not hide Your face from me.” It’s the cry of the thirsty soul. To seek God’s face is to seek his friendship — to speak with him, to know him and to be known by him.
This is the great prize of the spiritual life. Not merely the Promised Land given to the Israelites, but the eternal promised land of heaven: to see the Lord’s glory, to be with him face to face and to be united to him forever.
So today, let us dare to speak to God as Moses did — as one friend speaks to another. Let us pray for that desire, that thirst, to be stirred up in our hearts again.
Let us pray,
Almighty ever-living God, whom, taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call our Father, bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters, that we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
